Health Canada today approved the 55th licensed producer to cultivate cannabis in Canada, RockGarden Medicinals Inc. With RockGarden’s approval, Health Canada is demonstrating that it is committed to ramping up the licensing process, as it had committed to do doing so in May of this year.

Health Canada announced in May of this year that it was streamlining the process for applicants to obtain commercial licensed producer licenses. While licensees will still have to go through lengthy processes, the security clearance review that often hangs in the shadows for applicants will now take place at the same time as the detailed review stage.

In addition, Health Canada appears to be preparing for the impending legalization of cannabis and the product demand that will arise; licensed producers can now cultivate an amount that is based on their vault capacity, and lower-value products such as leaves can now be stored in a secure area away from the vault, thus increasing the amount of cannabis that can be cultivated and stored in the vault.

While certain parts of the ACMPR commercial license process have been streamlined, some parts remain the same. Licensed producers will first be licensed to cultivate cannabis. With successful harvests, Health Canada will then enable the licensed producer in question to sell cannabis.

Since Health Canada’s streamlining announcement, a number of licensed producers have been licensed in addition to the Carleton Place, Ontario-based RockGarden Medicinals. These include Brantford-based Up Cannabis, which received their cultivation license in July. The company is owned by Newstrike, which saw its name in Canadian newspapers earlier this year when they announced that they would be collaborating with The Tragically Hip on thier cannabis branding.

THC Biomed, which previously had a license to sell only clones to registered persons, said they have received a license from Health Canada on August 24th of this year to begin selling dried cannabis to their clients.